


From Hell, With Love

by highflyerwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Horror, Season/Series 04 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 19:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highflyerwings/pseuds/highflyerwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The funny thing about Hell is that it actually isn't how people think it is at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Hell, With Love

**Author's Note:**

> My own version of what happened after the s3 finale.

The funny thing about Hell is that it actually isn't how people think it is at all.

Dean gasps awake, like he's been holding his breath for too long, sucking in great lung-fulls of air and forcing them out in loud whooshes into the darkness. 

The first thing he notices is that it's quiet.  The kind of quiet that makes your ears ring so loud you think you might go deaf.  There's no fire and brimstone, no burning pits, no cages of rotting corpses, or the screams of ten-thousand tortured souls.  Just... _silence_...

It's dark too.  And damp.  Sort of like your basement in the summer, and almost as creepy.  Almost. 

It smells like a basement too...

_Subtlety_ , Dean thinks.   _It's an interesting tactic_.  He has to give Lucifer a few extra bonus points for that, because  _hey, the only thing worse than Hell is being unoriginal, right?_   It's such a stark contrast to everything he's been taught though that he wonders whether maybe it's not Hell after all.   _Maybe it's something else_.  He's seen so much in his life, he's hardly surprised anymore when things turn out differently than he expected. 

But no.  This is Hell.  He can feel it as strongly as he felt those Hellhounds rip him apart, he feels that this is it.  This is what he's been waiting for.

It's hard to tell how much time has passed since he's opened his eyes.  At least...he thinks he's opened his eyes.  It's too dark to tell for sure.  He blinks a few times for good measure, and yeah.  They're open.

He's laying down, that much he's certain.  He takes a deep breath, wincing at how loud it sounds in the silence.  He carefully flexes his fingers where they lie resting at his sides, and he feels splintered wood beneath his fingertips, like the floor of Bobby's front porch. 

Dean still hasn't moved.  He's unsure why, but thinks it's probably best he stays still.  He thinks maybe something ought to have happened already and the thought that nothing has makes him a little uneasy. 

He suddenly thinks he can see movement in the darkness around him.  Quick flashes of shadow out of the corner of his eye, but it's too dark to tell.

He's antsy and uncomfortable, and the moment he contemplates getting up and moving, doing  _something_ , a light snaps on overhead.  It's only a dim light that even flickers a little before it fully turns on, but it's almost blinding after spending so long in the dark.  Dean's arms instinctively come up to block his face but are stopped short by the chains he hadn't noticed were there before, cuffed to his wrists.  He lets his arms fall back to his sides, the chains clanking dully against the wood, and he blinks rapidly, eyes burning and watering for a few seconds before they slowly adjust to the light. 

He looks around, his heart racing.  He can clearly sees he's on some sort of table.  The light over his head is just bright enough to illuminate his body, but little else.  Everything outside the perimeter of light is pitch black, and everything under it looks muted and gray, as if looking through a filter on a camera.

His breath is coming in short, panicked puffs, and his body is tensed, waiting for something.   _Anything_.  He lays impossibly still, and listens.  He's straining his ears so hard that when he finally hears a scurry of movement to his left he jerks almost violently.  He's panting, and the sound of his heartbeat is almost deafening inside his head.  He quickly searches the darkness around him and suddenly feels intensely vulnerable.  He can feel the open space around him like a living being, an almost physical pressing-in that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.  It's like sitting with your back to an open doorway.  The feeling that there's something there, right behind you.  Watching... _waiting_...Except it's not just at Dean's back.  It's all around him, setting his nerves on edge so hard he could scream.

It gets very quiet again.  All Dean can hear is his own harsh breathing and what sounds like the soft creak of floorboards around him.  Like someone's pacing the floor.   _Multiple someones_. 

Dean spent his entire life hunting every monster you dreamed of as a child.  Every creepy-crawly that slithered in the shadows, every creature that hid under your bed or whispered to you from your closet at night, and a thousand more you never had the courage to dream up. 

He can only imagine what's circling him in the darkness now.   

He can feel their movement.  He can't be more specific than that.  Just that he  _feels_.  He feels eyes on him, and the perceptible change in atmosphere as if something has just shifted from his left side to stand at the back of his head, and then again at his feet, slowly creeping upwards, towards his right shoulder.  All around him, things moving.  But he never actually _sees_  anything.  Just hears the unnerving creak of wood and the quick shuffle of footsteps from the shadows.

He's at the mercy of whatever's waiting in the darkness and he's scared, so scared that he's actually getting angry.   _Nothing's fucking happening!_   He's frustrated and  _angry_  and he's never been more scared in his life and he opens his mouth to shout his annoyance to the darkness, but before he can say anything he hears what sounds unbelievably like a door being opened and then closed in the direction of his feet.

Dean stills instantly and lifts his head to look in the direction of the sound.  Immediately he notices something's different.  Whatever it was that had been circling him before is gone.  Just... _gone_.  Retreated completely into the shadows with only the faint sound of scurrying footfalls and the raspy hiss of tiny voices. 

Like something scared them off...

Once again everything is eerily still.  Dean lets his head thump back down against the table and he stares up at the ceiling.  He holds his breath and waits...

Then he hears it.

The slow creak of the floor, and the soft drag of footsteps.  One solid...slow...step...after the other, starting at his feet and working their way up his left side.

Dean follows the sound with his eyes and when it stops at his shoulder he blinks at the wall of unfailing darkness and quickly returns his gaze to the ceiling, because God  _damn it_.  His chest heaves with each deep, shaky breath he takes, and when he speaks, his voice is gruff and breathless through his clenched jaw, "It's rude to keep company waiting, you know."

Whatever is standing next to him begins to laugh.  It starts soft, and then crescendos into something jagged and psychotic that makes Dean's skin crawl.  It sounds too weird.  Too  _close_.  He winces and squeezes his eyes shut, his jaw clenching painfully tighter.  He's breathing heavily through his nose, and he chances opening his eyes to glance to the left.  He thinks maybe he can see the outline of a figure in the dark.  Faint.  Barely there.  A shadow that seems to shift from one form to another as Dean's brain tries to decipher what his eyes are seeing.   _Pareidolia,_ Dean thinks the word.  He heard it somewhere before.  Your brain's attempt at making some sense out of just what the fuck your eyes are seeing even if they're seeing nothing at all.  His eyes squeeze shut again.  _Nothing._    _Relax.  Just relax.  You've got this.  You've dealt with shit like this before, you can do it again.  You can do this.  Come on, Dean.  Focus..._  


Suddenly the laughter stops.  Dean lets out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding in and his eyelids snap open.  He slowly turns he head to the left and peers into the blackness...

A face emerges from the dark, bent low, and close to his own, and a scream rises in Dean's throat that never quite escapes.  He's physically too afraid to scream.  It's a human face, but only barely.  It's slightly too large, and  _oh God!  What the fuck?_   Dean can't look at it.  He can't fucking look at it, but he can't look away.  He just stares, frozen and horrified, into the wide, black pits of its eyes, set in a face that's too sharp and elongated and  _wrong_.  Its gaping hole of a mouth is twisted permanently into a wide grin, revealing a row of jagged teeth dripping with something Dean doesn't have the stomach or rational thought process to identify. 

"Time to play, Deano."  Its voice is grating and psychotic sounding, and its grin widens to an impossible and inhuman degree, and it's  _laughing_  again, a relentless sound, filled with every threat and promise Hell has to offer as it slowly retreats into the shadows once more.


End file.
